The techno-social environment

We learned this about plat­forms a long time ago: fol­lowing the old news­paper schematic, they aren’t the printing presses, but rather the assign­ment editors.

The network is less a tool than a habitation, less an apparatus than an environment. We don’t just use it to get things done. We are, as Adorno foresaw, incorporated into it as components. We’re nodes, continuously receiving and transmitting signals. The ethos of the system is one of documentation and representation. We’re all jointly engaged in th... See more

collective effervescence : a heightened emotional state resulting from simultaneous social participation. Just as singing gospel music can bring about a deeper connection to God, so too can participating in a meme or TikTok trend.

We are in a system that is designed to blind, distract, and blur - the infinite scroll.

This current manifestation of the internet and consumer technology is insidiously powerful because of the way that it can mimic these loops that evolved for other things and were necessary for our survival. They’re now essentially being co-opted by a sort of fake system. The tech systems have gotten so good at mimicking these ancient reward pathway

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